The Movie Posters of Stephen Frankfurt

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Courtesy of the excellent indie film site Mubi, a quick overview of a seminal designer from the formative era of American advertising: “Frankfurt was a brilliant designer as well as a great ideas man, and his most innovative marketing concept, starting with ‘Rosemary’s Baby̵ in 1968, was to see the packaging of movies as a totality — designing the titles, posters, trailers and ads with one common look and theme.”

In addition to “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Downhill Racer,” shown above, Frankfurt contributed to a host of films from the 60s and 70s, many of which you’re sure to recognize. And yes, of course, the write-up includes the obligatory reference to “Mad Men,” so rest assured Don Draper fans, you can continue to view that era through the lens of that show — much as your knowledge of “Happy Days” rounds out your view of the 1950s. I kid! Read Mubi’s write-up here.

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  1. Sean Villafranca

    From Mubi’s write up:
    “…it is hard to know whether he designed all the posters himself. In blog posts about Frankfurt I have seen comments saying that one Philip Gips was either the co-creator or the chief designer of a lot of these campaigns, but I have been unable to find any more about Mr. Gips.”

    Having worked for Philip Gips’s small agency that he started after leaving Frankfurt Gips Balkind in the mid-90’s, I know for sure that he indeed lead-designed most of the posters that Stephen Frankfurt has been credited for in the Mubi article.

    In fact, the article erroneously credits Frankfurt with writing the “In space no one can hear you scream” tagline for “Alien,” when the truth of the matter is that Phil Gips’s wife, Barbara, wrote the line (Phil told me this himself and took great pride in that fact).

    There isn’t much on the web about Phil, so I just wanted to give the guy his proper due.

  2. Efe Cakarel

    Awesome.

    There was this debate within the team here at MUBI whether or not ‘Emmanuelle’ — http://mubi.com/films/1680 — belongs to our library. I remember saying, “of course it does! the poster is designed by Frankfurt.”

    This of course followed with various calls with our advisors and Board with me explaining why we allowed French softcore-porn in our library. All for art!

    /efe
    founder of MUBI

  4. Stef

    I was just browsing through some old VW ads that and came across this:

    Link

    I wonder if this silhouetting was in style at the time and perhaps a small influence, or was it just a co-incidence?

  5. grills

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  7. Alicia

    You’re absolutely right. Phil Gips designed those movie posters. Phil Gips is a most remarkable designer. Unfortunately he often let others take the credit for his genius … because, well, I think Phil was more interested in creating outstanding work than in self-promotion.

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